REVIEW: "Never think out loud !"

Sorry for “thinking out loud”, but I “think” you should

open this picture in a new folder to appreciate all its

glorious details.

So, there we are. Now I can't elude all your questions about the Hatbox Ghost anymore. "Who on Earth or in the Netherworld is he?", have you been crying out loud.

Well.

The Hatbox Ghost figure was, actually, installed in the Haunted Mansion… for a few days. He was an cloaked, short, elderly and skeletal figure, wearing an oversized top hat and holding an equally oversized hatbox. In those days, as you'll remember from my analysis of "Brides of the Mansion", the local Bride was Emily the Ambiguous Bride, in her skeletal, scary form. Emily's glowing heart's heartbeat sound effect filled the attic, thump-thump, thump-thump, and the Hatbox Ghost's gimmick was that his head would disappear from his shoulders and reappear in his now glowing hatbox, all in synchronization with the heartbeats. As argued elsewhere, the implication was likely that Skeletor Emily had murdered the Hatbox Ghost, or that he was murdered because of her; but whatever the case, the two of them were linked, in an interesting unsolved mystery that the guests were led to ponder about. But then, real life stepped in, with one of those trivial but also terribly crippling problems meeting the poor spook: the lights on the track of the Omnimovers that the guests traveled on were located much too close to the Hatbox Ghost, and they reduced his trick (which would have been executed with special light-sensitive paint) to nothingness. 

Thus, without a gimmick, Hattie had to go… And in spite of the Imagineers's futile efforts to fix him, he did, with no coming back for another sixty years. However, since he was removed after the attraction's opening, 1° there were numerous eye witnesses and 2° more significantly, he was prominently featured in pre-opening merchandise that continued to be sold after his removal; people who'd buy the souvenir book, or the souvenir record, or would get their hands on a flyer for the attraction, would recognize 998 spooks on the photos… except for this one striking elderly skeleton guy with the hatbox. Thus they would search and snoop around, without much success until the Internet came in. And at this point, the Hatbox Ghost's popularity exploded, thanks to all these witnesses who thought they were mistaken coming together and sharing fond memories of "Hattie". Information surfaced, so did a few decent photographs, and soon the only ghost that wasn't in the Mansion had become one of its icons, right up there with the Hitchhiking Ghosts and Madame Leota, to the point that he was often featured in official Disney merchandise. 

Yet all this time, the Hatbox Ghost wasn't coming back to his attic, which was no longer "his", as the set had been entirely changed to make room for the new bride, Constance Hatchaway, and her new specific, Hatbox-Ghost-less backstory. (Now the Hatbox Ghost finally came back, though outside of the attic, but that's irrelevant; this strip was published before that.) 

Now, Kelly's idea with her Hatbox Ghost is that he too wants to go back to the attic… desperately so ! But Constance just won't let him, and neither will the Ghost Host and Master Gracey — he's banished, dammit ! He can't go in !

Thus, with the history out of the way, let's cut to the story. 

Sorry for giving you such a large chunk of image at once, but it was to point to an excellent effect. The animation. I already spoke about it in a previous review, but it's really most obvious here. Each panel flows into each other, and since they have the same proportions and framing, it would be easy to think of them as animation cells from a finished, flowing, masterly-animated cartoon. 

Also, Constance Hatchaway's and the Hatbox Ghost's poses and faces are really excellent. And I do mean excellent. Not "average-excellent" as is often the case with Kelly (i.e. just her uncanny ability to draw the faces right at once), but an excellence where it's obvious that she put even more effort in it than usual. Just look at the Hatbox Ghost's smirks in panels 3 to 4, or Constance's increasingly annoyed expression. This is not just good art. It's master art. It's comical genius.

There is also a comparatively minor detail that I find funny here: this is our first color Hatbox Ghost strip, and thus we can discover that in Kelly's world, he is… black and white. Which all makes sense, actually. For one, he's supposed to be an "old-school" ghost from 1969, not one of 'em modern effects like Constance. Also, the only photograph we have of him depicts him as black and white. Finally, it emphasizes how little Hattie fits in the new attic, which is all blue: he looks like a fish out of water in those panels, like something someone cut from one photograph and pasted on another without minding the lighting.

This strip is one of the highlights, if not the highlight, of this series. Bravo.

REVIEW: "Brides of the Mansion"

It is once more advised to click to enlarge and enjoy this picture in all of its details.

Now, this is probably more an illustration than a strip, but (contrary to some other illustrations by Kelly) it is still undeniably part of the series. 

Now, though the facial expressions (which are really great !) in this strip can amuse anyone, some historical insight about the Haunted Mansion attraction(s) might be required to get what this picture is all about. So let's analyze it for you, since analyzing and reviewing is what this blog is for. 

As you probably know, an important part of the Haunted Mansion ride is the Attic, where you meet the foreboding ghost of a lonely bride. The two main character models are the Beating Heart Bride, who is characterized by a red glow in her chest where her heart would be, which beats back and forth, with the noise filling the attic. This design existed from the Mansion's opening to 2006, and was dubbed "Emily". The second one is the Black Widow Bride, who wields an axed and is implied to have brutally killed her groom(s), and has been officially (and cleverly) dubbed Constance Hatchaway; she replaced the former bride in 2006. However, before Beating Heart was replaced with the Black Widow, she had gone through many redesigns, and several completely different animatronics had been created. This picture is the imaginary scene of all the versions of the Bride characters having tea together. Which is hilarious. 

The two Brides here are the first and second versions, respectively nicknamed Skeletor and Round Eyes. As the two oldest ones in the bunch, it'd make sense that they would preferentially chat with each other, reminiscing about the "good old times" and such. I especially love Skeletor's expression (she looks like an old, but cunning and slightly zany lady from a good comedy film).

The purple one is Constance Hatchaway (notice the hatchet), the Black Widow Bride who murdered five husbands in a row. The one with the brown hair is Mélanie Ravenswood, who is not from a previous version of the Haunted Mansion, but from its Disneyland Paris counterpart Phantom Manor. As you may or may not know, Phantom Manor takes a lot of set pieces and ideas from the Haunted Mansion, but plays it all for drama, and the whole attraction is themed around the oh so tragic story of the poor bride Mélanie, persecuted by the evil Phantom (who may or may not be her own father Henry Ravenswood's ghost) who killed her groom unbeknownst to her. Though Phantom Manor is pretty good, it is a little bit too melodramatic if you're expecting something as light-hearted as the California and Florida Haunted Mansions. Hence why this is affectionately parodied here with Mélanie being in tears (about her own story, probably).

Why is coupling her with Constance a good idea ? Well, it must be noted that fan ravings about "Emily" and various urban legends notwithstanding, none of the other Brides (the Beating Heart ones) have a defined backstory or morality. You don't know if they were tragically abandoned by their groom, or if they murdered him. Some will tell you it adds to the effect, others that it's lazy, but whatever the case may be, Mélanie and Constance are both derived from the original morally-ambiguous Beating Heart Bride, but stretched in opposite directions. As Kelly herself puts it, they are "on the opposite ends of the Bride spectrum".

Those are the two least remembered and least beloved models of brides. The one on the left, the “Smurf Bride”, is disliked for being two openly a victim (compared to the ambiguous Round Eyes who preceded her), and, well, for having (for some reason) blue skin. The one on the right is the “Crazy Hairdo Bride”, who is nicknamed like that because huh… well you can see for yourself. Nobody knows why the Imagineers redesigned the Smurf Bride's hair that way, but everybody found it ridiculous and awkward (hence the Smurf Bride's reaction to it). 

So, there is Brides of the Mansion. The art is increasingly hilarious, and it was nice to see some color before we went back to the black-and-white.

BONUS

A little while later, Kelly did this, which is a model sheet of sorts for four versions of the Bride (including a cameo by the Tokyo Disneyland Bride, who is yet another character who is not in this one, but whatever). I will not review it further since it is not a comic strip at all and is actually nothing but pencil sketches, but the expressions there are quite as excellent as on this one, and very varied, too. Check it out !